Stryker Boosts Quarterly Dividend to 26.5 Cents, Payable Jan. 31

By Michael Aneiro

Medical manufacturer Stryker Corp. (SYK) late Wednesday announced a 25% quarterly dividend hike to $0.265 per share. Interestingly, while many companies are accelerating dividend payments so they fall in 2012 to avoid possible 2013 tax hikes, Stryker said its dividend will be paid on Jan. 31, 2013 to shareholders as of Dec. 31, 2012. Stryker has been flagged lately as a possible special dividend issuer before year-end but it hasn’t announced any such plans, at least yet.

Stryker did say its board authorized an additional $405 million under its common stock repurchase program, which raises the program total to $1 billion.

“Given the considerable strength of our balance sheet and strong cash flow generation, we are well positioned to pursue a capital allocation strategy that includes highly focused M&A, an increasingly robust dividend and share buybacks,” said Kevin A. Lobo, Stryker president and CEO, in the obligatory dividend-accompanying statement. “We are committed to a strategy that will help drive our sales and earnings growth while simultaneously returning capital to shareholders at meaningful and consistent levels.”

SYK shares, which now offer a dividend yield of 1.96%, were recently down 22 cents to $54.14 in Thursday morning trade.

Amey Stone is Barron’s Income Investing blogger and Current Yield columnist. She was formerly a managing editor at CBS MoneyWatch, MSN Money and AOL DailyFinance. Her responsibilities included overseeing market coverage and personal finance topics. Prior to those roles, she was a senior writer at BusinessWeek where she authored the Street Wise column online and contributed to the magazine’s Inside Wall Street column. Topics covered included economics, corporate finance, Fed policy, municipal bonds, mutual funds and dividend investing. She co-authored King of Capital, a biography of Citigroup Chairman Sandy Weill. She is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.